NC State developed software can be used with existing network protocols and hardware

When it comes to WiFi networks, the key to boosting speed may not lie solely in adopting new, faster hardware and software protocols, but also in developing better software to balance loads when networks get overrun with traffic.

At 25 users the system showed a 400 percent gain in throughput, while at 45 users the system sped the network up 700 percent versus traditional networking software. Best of all, the researchers say their program plays nicely with existing protocols and network hardware without the need for an upgrade.

The only potential downside is that if by some unfortunate occurrence all the access points in a region were overloaded, the gains might be diminished, hypothetically. But for most scenarios where some areas are swamped and others underutlized, the dynamic prioritizing concept could offer a big step forward.

The researchers are presenting their work at the ACM CoNEXT 2012 conference in Nice, France. The paper's authors are Arpit Gupta (lead author), a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State, Jeongki Min, a Ph.D. student at NC State, and Dr. Injong Rhee (senior author), a professor of computer science at NC State.